


for you, a viking's funeral

by deniigiq



Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Canon-Typical Violence, Homelessness, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Stray-feeding, Suicidal Thoughts, you know just Matt being Matt and Wade being Wade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “They call me Deadpool,” he said, stooping over to push the devil onto his side into the recovery position. “But you can call me your guardian angel.”(Wade meets the Devil of Hell's Kitchen out on the streets. He tries to lure him inside out of the cold and catches feelings along the way.)
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker & Wade Wilson, Matt Murdock/Wade Wilson
Comments: 21
Kudos: 543





	for you, a viking's funeral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candlesneedflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlesneedflame/gifts).



> **@dumbbitchnumberone (candlesneedflame on AO3)** wanted Matt/Wade.  
> I always want Matt/Wade and so was happy to oblige. I wanted Wade to be a little more balanced in this one since this deals with some slightly more serious topics, so that's why he's like That.
> 
> This doesn't exist inside any of my verses, just fyi. 
> 
> References to violence, suicidal thoughts, homelessness, nonconsensual drugging and serious injuries below, please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe!

The first Wade saw of the devil was his teeth. They were straight and gleaming white where they weren’t stained with red.

The devil was said to be tall, dark, and handsome. Some kinda angel-esque Lucifer dude, who’d dropped down from the sky, shedding feathers, to keep mankind honest.

Wade could admit that he was disappointed.

All the devil in front of him had was all them teeth. There wasn’t a feather in sight.

And yeah, Wade had looked this ass— _guy_ , this _guy_ up a couple of times prior to this fortuitous meeting, so he’d known not to expect feathers, but he still couldn’t shake the romantic image of some heavenly warrior sweeping through the spilled, rancid, and largely alcoholic waters that flowed through Hell’s Kitchen, dotted by crushed glass and broken dreams. It had been a beautiful image. The devil had been peaceful and glowing until it turned a corner and erupted into a screeching demon-banshee type of creature, scaring the shit out of its unhappy victims and hurling said victims against alley walls with the sheer force of its righteous indignation.

Wade had fallen a little in love with this fairytale, he could admit it.

It was a little like death. A fallen angel-turned-demon standing just out of his reach. He thought that maybe he’d take a little waltz through the Kitchen to see if maybe he would catch a glimpse of it.

What he got was white teeth flecked with red and a body crushed and thrown into the piss and sentient trash at the base of a dead end, crumbling wall.

Lyin’ there beaten like a nearly dead dog.

One good kick to the chest and this so-called devil was going to meet his maker and only god knew whether he was headed up or down.

So much for romance.

Wade waited for the man’s assailants to throw their make-shift weapons at him and leave the alley scoffing before he leaned out from around his safe corner for a better look at the remains of the devil himself.

The devil stayed right where he was, baring his teeth at Wade. Apparently now bearing the insult of having been beaten at his own game.

Hell’s Kitchen was full of feral dogs.

One look told Wade that this one was the stupidest of them all.

He wasn’t getting back up. This was the devil’s last night on the town. He’d lost his wager. Lost his fiddle of gold and his next victim’s soul. All he had left in him was one last whine and maybe a half-assed bite.

Wade stepped into the alley towards the wrecked body at the back of it.

He whistled.

“A rough night for you, huh, devil-boy?” he asked jovially as he got closer to the teeth.

The teeth grew slightly taller as the devil curled his lips back as far as he could. He still didn’t get up. Didn’t show Wade his belly either, though, so that was something.

Wade crouched down next to him. He heard something crunch under his toes. The devil’s bottom lip was red like he’d painted it. Blood was pooling in the center of it, dripping out from a torn gum.

Wade drew his weapon.

“I’ll make it real quick for you, honey,” he promised. “You won’t feel a thing. I swear.”

Dying dogs get put down.

That was the humane thing to do.

The devil saw his weapon and pressed back into the wall. That cute little smile of his was gone. Blood dribbled down onto the ground when he closed his lips and jerked back.

“Don’t shoot,” he half-garbled in a fucked-up baritone.

Poor thing.

Couldn’t even breathe. Sounded like someone had punched him in the lung. Might have been one of those tire irons the past-assailants had used on him.

“It’s okay,” Wade said softly. “You’re okay. Settle down, now. You’re just hurtin’ yourself even more.”

“Don’t shoot,” the devil wheezed. “Please—don’t—”

Man was losing breath.

It was now or never.

Wade took off the safety and hushed the devil as he tried to find his way up to his knees.

It would be a poetic kind of death.

The devil would die on hands and knees. Wade would lay him out like he was sleeping. He had a lighter in his pocket. He could get a fire going with all this trash. It wouldn’t smell great, but the devil deserved to go out with a blaze.

Ashes to ashes and all that.

Wade crept close enough to put a hand on the devil’s struggling shoulder. The struggling stopped. Hands went up in front of the man’s face. They were disgusting.

Wade sighed.

He hated this part.

“Please,” the devil gasped behind those hands and through a heaving chest. “I can’t—I can’t breathe.”

No shit, Sherlock.

“I’m—I’m—STOP.”

Wade sighed.

“Alright, pal, give us some last words then,” he said.

The devil had started making a strange, guttural panting noise.

Didn’t sound good. Sounded pretty close to dying. But even still, one of his hands inched forward until it wrapped itself over the muzzle of Wade’s gun. He was half-tempted to shake the thing off. God knew where it had been.

“Please?” the devil hissed. “I’m blind. I need—I need help.”

Psh.

Blind.

Listen. Wade’s research had involved more than just watching this guy’s ass jiggle as he ran around this part of the city like a loose zoo monkey. He knew parkour when he saw it. The real thing, even, not that fake, flashy shit on Instagram.

He also knew that this fucker knew how to fight. He was trained. He was a possibly a pro. An under-8s karate teacher or some shit.

Blind.

Psh.

Nice try, pal. But you get points for being fucked up all the way to the end.

The devil’s hand had started shaking. It slipped off the gun’s muzzle to the ground. His head dipped forward and he carried on making that weird fuckin’ whistling-wheezing sound.

“Who are you?” the devil asked, quiet as sin itself.

He was really on the edge now.

Goddamnit. This had been what Wade had been trying to avoid.

Fine. Let it not be said that he didn’t try.

He groaned, then clicked the safety back onto the gun. It went into its holster and he stood up out of his crouch. His damn knees cracked.

Gettin’ old, they were. They’d need replacing soon.

“They call me Deadpool,” he said, stooping over to push the devil onto his side into the recovery position. “But you can call me your guardian angel.”

The devil appeared to have a collapsed lung. He needed fast attention.

Lucky for him, Wade knew a man in these parts.

Said man was a retired army doc. He came running before Wade had even finished describing the devil’s whistling. He was stabbing the devil’s chest with a penknife in a flash. The gesture was a nice addition to the rest of the devil’s weeping wounds.

That done, the devil still needed a little help getting back to breathing. Doc wanted him moved somewhere where that could be more easily accomplished. He made Wade pick this not-angel not-devil up out of the tetanus nest he’d stumbled into.

A couple hours later saw Wade sitting on the floor next to a cot, holding all kinds of suspicious bottles of liquid, while Doc peeled the devil none too gently out of his cute little catsuit.

He was a young guy, really.

Doc slipped off his mask to check his head for bleeding and froze.

Wade felt that.

Kid was maybe thirty. Maybe. Probably more likely in his late twenties. It was hard to tell through the swelling.

“Matthew, no,” Doc said. “Not you, boy.”

Wade’s brain took a second to get hung up on the fact that Doc knew this kid’s name. And that it was fuckin’ Matthew. Matthew. God. Ew. How proper.

Taz. Wade was calling him ‘Taz.’ Like that cartoon Tasmanian devil. Much cooler. Much more in line with his general image.

He watched Doc’s whole demeanor change as he patched Taz up. He was real gentle with Taz’s hands. Too gentle, in Wade’s opinion. That grit and shit could have been pulled out of the skin there at, at least twice that speed.

“What’d he say to you, Wade?” the old man asked. “He say this was some kinda trick?”

Mm, no.

“He asked me not to shoot and told me he was blind,” Wade said. “Kind of fucked up to go with the disabled-card, but you know—”

“Someone’s framed him,” Doc said immediately.

Wade paused.

Doc was an insensitive jerk at the best of times. He was in the game still for the money and the money only. He had a grandkid or something he was trying to put through school since his own daughter died.

That was how you knew he was giving you the best treatment he could offer. He wasn’t about to let his money die on any of his raggedy-ass cots. Not when he had bills to pay.

“Whaddya mean ‘framed’?” Wade asked.

“Did I fuckin’ stutter, man?” Doc snapped. “I said, he’s been framed. This is probably that Fisk-guy’s doin’. Poor fuckin’ kid, man. Poor fuckin’ kid. He ain’t deserve this. You’re okay, honey. You ain’t deserve this.”

He stroked a hand over Taz’s sweaty hair.

Wade still didn’t get it.

Doc was losing patience with him.

“This man’s a local attorney,” he explained irritably. “Got Winnie’s life insurance worked out for us. He’s a good kid—a great kid. Helps folks ‘round here day in and day out. Works harder and longer than any of them other city attorneys and he ain’t in it for the money, Wade. Didn’t ask us for a dime. Wilson Fisk—that fuckhead who keeps runnin’ for mayor—he don’t like Matthew. Matt’s part of the team who got his ass thrown in prison the first time around, you know. And Fisk’s always claiming here, there, and everywhere that he knows who Daredevil is. He probably set up Matt here to die in that guy’s place so he could have his proof.”

Ehn.

This was a cute story and all, but Wade was sure that this Taz here wasn’t half the angel Doc seemed to think he was and he was bored.

“Alright, you like him so much, you keep him,” he said, standing up.

Doc stood up with him.

“Thanks for not shooting him, Wade,” he said like he actually cared about another human being for once.

Gross.

“Whatever. Tell him he owes me ten grand,” Wade said.

“No charges for this one,” Doc said.

Wade nearly choked.

He watched Doc over his shoulder and squinted hard, trying to remember that mirror trick to tell if you were in another dimension or being watched from another room or some shit. He checked the walls for wide flat spaces.

Nothing. Doc had pictures up all over his walls.

He snapped his gaze back to Doc.

“No charge,” he repeated.

“No charge,” Doc said, settling back down next to his bleeding, wheezing victim-attorney.

Hm.

“I’ll take that,” Wade said.

He left.

Taz was a fuckhead.

Wade told him this.

“You’re a fuckhead,” he said, inches away from Taz’s face.

“You’re Deadpool,” Taz remembered pleasantly, as though he was not presently suspended by an ankle and slowly turning in circles a good eight stories from the ground.

It was the same guy. He was wearing a black mask this time. Evidently his red one hadn’t made it through his brush with death and Doc.

“Listen, friend. I don’t say this a lot, since I’m, you know, me. But you got a problem,” Wade told those familiar teeth.

They smiled at him.

“I got all kinds of problems,” Taz said in a strong Hell’s Kitchen accent. “But if you still got that gun of yours, I might be able to have one less.”

Wade had run into very few people as stupid as himself. That was primarily because acting like a fucking moron when you weren’t half that stupid after all was a hard gig to maintain for the longterm. Wade had loads of practice. He and Hawkeye down south were vying for the unwritten championship in the Idiot-But-Not-An-Idiot world cup.

This little shit was a strong contender for third, apparently.

“You askin’ me to shoot through your life-line there,” Wade asked.

“Yes.”

“Just checkin’,” Wade said. “You aware that you’re, oh, say, round a hundred feet from the gutter?”

Taz smiled at him even wider.

“I am now,” he said.

“You want cherry, mahogany, or plywood for your rot-box, hon?” Wade asked him.

Taz tried to flex his abs to help him reach the cord wrapped around his ankle. He couldn’t quite make it. He dropped back down panting a bit and did another little spin.

“I was hoping for cremation, honestly,” he said casually. “My partner’s got my will, though, so don’t sweat it. Just give us one bullet, maybe? Preferably above the sole, but if you can’t manage it, I’m sure someone out there’ll find a foot graze sexy.”

Wade…liked? This guy?

Woah, when had that happened?

“Sure thing, peaches,” Wade said. “Just one more question if you don’t mind it.”

Taz flicked a thumb up. Or rather, down.

“Shoot,” he said. “The question, that is. And then the gun after, hopefully.”

“You actually blind?” Wade asked.

“Roger that,” Taz said.

Right.

“Real blind?”

“As blind as you can be,” Taz said. “But it’s okay. I’ve got a stellar nose.”

Wade laughed. He couldn’t help it. Taz was nuts.

“Gimme your hand, fuckhead,” he said. “Be prepared to leap into my arms, Imma give you to the count of three.”

Taz brightened and wriggled a bit in anticipation. He had stubble on his cheeks this time.

Taz was deceptively heavy, just as he had been the first time Wade had schlepped his ass across town. This time, though, he helped. He wrapped arms around Wade’s neck when Wade caught him.

He was much firmer in general when he was conscious. He was also twice as insistent to be put down immediately.

“Don’t want my love after all?” Wade teased.

Taz turned back to him with a cocked head.

“You’re Deadpool,” he said. “My friends tell me to steer clear.”

“Oh, you have friends now,” Wade said. “Well excuse me. I don’t fuck with people with friends.”

“Me either,” Taz said.

His chin was square. His lips sloped into a pout when he didn’t want something from you.

“You busy tonight, Taz?” Wade asked him. “Got alleys to die in?”

“Taz,” Taz repeated.

“It’s your name,” Wade said. “I was gonna go with Schnookums Pooh-Bear, but it didn’t feel quite right.”

“Red.”

Wade blinked.

“Red,” Taz repeated. “Folks call me ‘Red.’”

“Folks call you ‘Matthew,’” Wade countered.

Red laughed. Long and hard.

He wiped at his eyes when he was done cackling.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess some still do, don’t they?”

Wade didn’t know what that meant. But he knew that kind of laugh.

“Thought you had a partner, big guy,” he said.

“Had,” Red said. “Just like I had a name. He’d still pick my coffin wood for me, though. Anyways, Deadpool, it’s been nice chatting. I’ll see you around.”

Would he, though?

Red was around. Anytime Wade stumbled into the Kitchen, he materialized to agitate Wade and ask for weird favors. Ask weird questions.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

He was feeling Wade out. Assessing him as a threat. Wade could practically hear him sniffing around at him. But Red rarely came in close enough to touch again.

His stubble got longer and shorter and his jaw harder and softer.

Something wasn’t right with the guy. Wade was a professional in all things not-right, and this kid was setting off alarm bells in his head.

They were similar bells as those that screeched with the city’s new red and blue baby swung into Wade’s field of vision, but different.

Something was different.

Red wore false cheer and optimism like rouge. His knuckles were always cracked and he sometimes reeked of alley rot and body odor, but other times smelt like snow.

He seemed to smell like snow when it snowed.

Wade had been there a handful of times. It wasn’t nice. He’d rather have a roof any day of the week.

So he decided that fuck it, he was already making friends with a baby spider, what the hell was another stray on his watch?

Red’s fingers were burning cold when he took the plastic bag Wade held out to him. He didn’t quite get it on the first try. His frigid fingers brushed the side of Wade’s hand through his torn glove, then grazed a couple of his still-gloved fingers before they found the edge of the ziplock bag.

“What is it?” Red asked him.

“Presents,” Wade said. “Secret cyanide, shhhhh.”

Red smiled.

“I got a guy for this,” he said. “Thanks.”

And then he was off again.

Wade found the bag, still filled with cereal, an hour later, settled snugly in the snow on a roof.

It hadn’t been opened.

Spidey was easy to gain the trust of. Spidey was a literal child whose fingers barely made it the whole way around Wade’s hands. He didn’t know what he didn’t know, so he didn’t know to be afraid of Wade’s jokes and his teasing and all the red flags that seemed to pop up around him wherever he went.

Red was harder.

Red wouldn’t be fed and he wouldn’t be driven off. But he would happily forget who Wade was sometimes and drive him out of his territory, just as he drove anyone else away.

But then the next week, he’d be silky sweet all over again. Coming in close to steal Wade’s bullets or kick guns right out of his hands.

Red was a pain in the ass.

He was feral. Too feral.

His lips hadn’t seen central heating for weeks now. They were chapped into lines of tiny, dark scabs on his lips.

He growled and he strutted and he bit.

And he pressed up against Wade out of no-fucking-where and asked him if he wanted to fuck.

And obviously, Wade did.

Red didn’t stay. He never stayed. He rode and he sucked and he whined and he shuddered and once, he accepted a shower, but he didn’t stay.

He didn’t accept food, even though he was on the wrong side of lookin’ lean.

He hated Spidey. He snarled at Spidey so viciously the one time the kid came chasing after Wade for advice for tracking a mutual mark, that the kid flat out refused to fuck with Hell’s Kitchen.

Red even took a swing at him. Wade caught his arm and then caught a surprisingly strong kick to the gut, followed by a killer several slugs in the chest, and then Red was gone again.

Gone for weeks.

Only back to fight Wade with everything he had one time, until Wade stood right outside the boundaries of Hell’s Kitchen. He was chopped liver then. Red wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He didn’t seem to hear the joke or the jabs or the teasing. None of it.

If it happened outside Hell’s Kitchen, it didn’t exist.

The world didn’t exist.

Wade had a nose around.

He couldn’t help it. He had an internet connection and three whole times the month previous, he’d had Red in his bed, whining, moaning, and rolling them bony hips into Wade’s own, heedless of the scars all over Wade’s body.

It was like he truly didn’t see them.

So Wade got curious and had a look. He looked up ‘Matthew’ and ‘attorney’ in Hell’s Kitchen and was presented with a Yelp page with more than a hundred reviews on it. Armed with Red’s full name from that, he clicked around and was shortly presented with the image of a _very_ well-groomed and familiar jawline and nose, this time wearing sunglasses, alongside the word ‘missing.’

Red had been missing for three months.

Hiding, more like.

Maybe even lost.

Red laughed in Wade’s face when he awkwardly got around to asking him if he was aware that his people were looking for him and had been for three months.

“Where is that good ole Deadpool confidence?” Red asked.

He was wearing different boots from usual. These looked heavier.

“You on something, Red?” Wade asked him, flat out. “’Cause I’ve heard you lawyers are all about the coke, and if you wanna do coke, I am more than happy to make room for that date in my schedule.”

Red considered this and then shrugged.

“It’s too cold for coke,” he decided. “But if you got some whiskey, I won’t say no.”

Ah.

So booze was his poison then.

Funny, Red never smelled especially boozy.

“How much you want?” he asked.

Red stopped tapping the toes of his boots against the corner of the roof and turned Wade’s way. His lips were slack enough to pout.

He dipped off the side of the roof without answering.

Wade made the mistake of having a talkative day around the Spiderkid and now the Spiderkid had it in his head that Daredevil needed to be helped in the direction of a rehab.

The child had zero sense of nuance.

He evidently expected Wade to have zero sense of nuance with him. And surprisingly, Wade wasn’t so sure he was so interested in playing the fool for this one.

There was something about the cold of Red’s fingers as they skirted up Wade’s ribs. Something in the way those lips sloped against the skin on his neck.

It made Wade feel things.

He hated feeling things.

He was good at it until he was bad at it and he didn’t like to be bad at jack shit, contrary to popular belief.

He was seeing now that he was bad at Red. At understanding Red. At interpreting Red. At figuring out where the lines and buttons were with that man and his heavy boots.

Red was, at present, unknowable.

Wade prided himself on being unpredictable, but Red stood between him and that these days. It was like the man could read Wade’s very heart. It was like he knew what Wade wanted before he himself did.

It was intoxicating.

Wade wanted to be around him more and more, just to see if he could trip him up. If he could find one of Red’s tells.

The Spiderchild was a smidge too young to be getting involved. Wade tried to put him off the scent.

The popcorn machine turned explosive device did the trick. It got a whole theatre evacuated and sent Spidey tearing off that way to see what was the trouble. In the meantime, Wade went home and picked out a bottle of whiskey.

Red cradled the whiskey in his hands like a happy cat. He practically purred at it, then practically purred at Wade for bringing it to him.

He ducked under Wade’s arm, the one holding the rest of the thermos, and settled into his lap to sip.

He was fucking cold, man.

“When’s the last time you slept inside, pal?” Wade snapped at him.

Red didn’t answer. He didn’t smell so strongly today and his stubble wasn’t too long. He must have recently had a bath.

“Fisk sent two guys after me this week,” Red said cheerfully at length.

“Fisk? The politician?”

“Mm.”

Red sipped delicately at the whiskey again. Savoring it. Wade kind of regretted giving it to him. It might make him feel warmer for now, but it would make him colder in the long run. If he was sleeping on rooftops, that wasn’t ideal.

“Come home with me,” he said.

Red perked up.

“Sure thing, partner,” he said, leaning forward into Wade’s chest and beaming up into his face with whiskey breath.

Red was much less pliable and sexy when he was a trapped cat.

He scraped a finger at Wade’s windowpane post-sexy times and gazed sadly back his way with an intentional, maximized pout on his lips.

“I want to go home,” he said.

He’d thrown on his clothes mere minutes after they’d finished up.

Wade sighed.

“You’ll freeze,” he said. “It’s below twenty tonight. Trust me on this one, I’m from bowels the Great North.”

“I want to go _home_.”

“Kid, one night away from Hell’s Kitchen won’t kill you.”

Red ground his forehead, then the top of his head against the window.

“Let me out,” he mumbled. “Or I’ll break it.”

Wade wasn’t so sure that he would.

“Come here,” he said. “We’ll play Scrabble ‘til dawn, you won’t even notice it.”

“I can’t play Scrabble,” Red whined. “Let me out or I’ll break it.”

A one track mind over here.

“Red, buddy. You’re gonna freeze,” Wade said.

“Hell’s cold. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not actually the devil, you know that, right?”

Red stopped his window-ministrations. He hopped off the sill and hurried over to throw himself across Wade and the blankets arranged haphazardly over his knees.

“I’m not, but there’s one in me,” he explained with a cheek squashed up against Wade’s thigh. “My gran said so. There was one in my dad, too. It killed him. And it’ll kill me. But not until it’s ready. So I won’t die, I promise.”

It was just a tiny glimpse at the summit of an iceberg of issues. But it was enough.

If Red wanted to have his mental break outside, then that was his decision. Wade had tried.

He reached over and dug the window key out from the mess on the bedside table. He got up and opened the window.

“Be free then, Willy,” he said.

Red sat up straight and then slowly unfolded himself from the bed. He crept closer and closer to Wade, then, all at once, rushed out the window. Wade heard his feet hit hard ground somewhere out there, and then he was gone.

The Spiderkid was angry now that he’d figured out Wade’s game here.

“How can I trust you if you just keep lying to me?” the Spiderkid demanded.

“So don’t trust me,” Wade told him. “I never said you should trust me. That’s your bad, not mine.”

The Spiderkid puffed up like an angry balloon and called Wade a series of what he seemed to think were offensive names.

‘Dickface’ was not an effective insult. But Wade was tickled that he was learning.

Red came and found him. The skin around the edge of his mask was blue and webbed with capillaries. His fingers were cracked. His knuckles had dyed the fabric wrapped around them a rust color.

He seemed thin.

He seemed confused.

“Foggy?” he asked Wade.

Wade lifted a brow.

“Foggy?” Red asked again. “Where’s Karen? Foggy, where’s Karen?”

Wade hadn’t heard of any of these people in his life. But he figured, ehn, what the hell?

“She’s with her aunt in Virginia,” he said.

Red tipped his head to the side and settled his lips back together.

“Virginia?” he asked after a moment.

“That’s right. Good ole Auntie Margot,” Wade said. “Always reliable. Super dependable. A real horse-lady if you know what I mean.”

Red frowned down at his knee.

“Virginia,” he said softly.

“You having a rough day there, champ?” Wade nudged.

Red didn’t look up. He didn’t move for a long time, but when he did, he snapped his head up and then jumped like he was startled.

“Foggy?” he asked.

Hm.

“Foggy?”

Now this?

“Foggy, where’s Karen?”

This was possibly a problem.

“She’s in Virginia, buddy,” Wade said, coming in closer. Red allowed this. He lifted his face up when Wade was stood right next to him and kept it faced that way, even when Wade knelt down next to him.

“Virginia?” Red asked.

Wade found the edge of Red’s mask with his fingertips. He pushed it up carefully and it came off without much of a struggle at all.

The last time he’d seen Red’s face in real life, it had been slack and tipped against the rough canvas of one of Doc’s cot.

He’d looked young then. But his eyes had been closed and the light had been yellow.

In natural light, Red’s hair was a distinct orangey-auburn. Wade knew this already because little bits of it stuck out of Red’s mask when he climbed on top of Wade and when he curled up afterwards for just a moment or two.

The handful of freckles was a bit of a surprise, but nothing would top those eyes.

Icy blue.

Milky blue.

Like blue stars hanging listlessly in the night sky.

All this time. He hadn’t been joking. He was never joking.

He reached out a hand and wrapped it around Wade’s wrist.

“You’re not Foggy,” he said.

His irises searched for a face he couldn’t see.

“No,” Wade said. “But I think it’s about time you found him.”

Red brought up his other hand and wrapped it around Wade’s other wrist. He closed both of his eyes and bowed his head.

“I want to go home,” he said.

Yeah.

“I feel that,” Wade told him.

“Are you home?”

“I don’t think so.”

Red lifted his face and pawed at Wade’s.

“You don’t feel like home,” he said.

Wade’s heart twisted a little at that, but hey man. He should have expected it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I can give you a raincheck, maybe?”

Red smiled and for the first time, Wade saw that it made the delicate crow’s feet around his eyes deepen.

“It’s okay,” he said. “No one’s tried for a long time.”

Whoever the fuck named their kid ‘Foggy’ deserved to be drawn and quartered on his fuckin’ behalf. Wade couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out who this person was.

And Red, bless his goddamn soul, was confused and not extremely helpful with descriptions, it turned out.

Wade managed to get him into the shower to warm up and then into some borrowed sweats and a sweater, which Red took to like a duck to water. He then needed to be in Wade’s lap.

He had zero conception of research needing to be done, despite having been the one who’d asked Wade to help him do it.

No. Instead, he needed to be in the way.

No, he didn’t have a phone.

No, he didn’t know anyone’s phone numbers.

No, he didn’t know Foggy’s current address.

And fucking _no_ , he would not, on his fucking life, divulge his buddy’s full name.

Instead, he wanted to make Wade’s fingers stop tapping on things.

He claimed he didn’t like the sound, but Wade suspected that he was starting to come back to himself and had vaguely remembered doing something that he regretted.

In extricating Red from the laptop and dumping him unceremoniously on the floor by the couch, Wade finally found the answer to many of his questions.

There was a raised red lump just visible on the sliver of skin that appeared between Red’s borrowed sweatshirt and sweats. It looked pretty angry. Pinning the guy down and getting some good nail marks in his arm for it revealed that there was a single dark hole in the middle of the lump.

Probably a syringe.

Probably a drug.

Welp. That was fun. Guess where we’re going now, bud?

Red could not possibly be less happy to be in Doc’s clutches for a second time. He tried to fight Doc. He didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know that he was back in his territory.

Doc laughed at him. He seemed to have assimilated to the reality of his patient’s situation fairly well.

He gave Wade a name while Red got a fun second shot to counteract what Wade came to understand was becoming a fairly common drug out on the streets these days.

It made Red retch and shake and whine and curse Doc with every fiber in his being. He was blessedly preoccupied with that while Doc wrote out for Wade the name ‘Franklin Nelson’ and an address for where to find him. He had a phone number, too, but it was a business number.

Wade figured that he was dealing with paper pushers now, and so decided to leave a voicemail.

That was what people in Red’s profession did, right? They played phone tag and scoured the city for ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards, right?

What the fuck did lawyers do??

Red tried to steal Wade’s phone.

This was not a thing that lawyers did. Wade was sure on that one.

As such, Red was not successful. He got as far as collapsing on Wade’s shoulder and making sad, pitiful sounds as he pushed and pulled lightly at Wade’s fingers.

“Good job, you’re doing amazing, sweetie,” Wade encouraged once the message had been left.

“Imma be in so much trouble,” Red slurred.

Doc barked a laugh. Red bared his teeth his way.

“’M Daredevil, old man,” he threatened like a drunk, “’M no’ scared of you. I’ll take ya.”

“Sure you will,” Doc said.

“I _will_. I can. You’ll see. Tell ‘im, Wade.”

Wade gave Doc a look. Doc’s smirk wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Wade elected to stay mum on that one.

“I knew your daddy, Matt, remember?” Doc reminded him.

Red scowled at him.

“I’ll fight ‘im, too,” he said.

Doc reached over and ruffled Red’s hair hard enough to send him off balance.

Red snapped his teeth after the hand and then buried his face under Wade’s chin as awkwardly as humanly possible.

Wade felt like he was being choked.

“You’re a fuckin’ handful, Redthew,” he finally said.

Red crammed himself in deeper.

Franklin P. Nelson called Wade at exactly 8:07am. Mere hours after Red had decided to submit to being an indoor cat for the time being. He was almost warm, even, with his nose pressed up against Wade’s spine. Wade disturbed him when he reached for the phone.

He got an earful of questions in a suspiciously familiar accent.

Halfway through them, Red woke up and slunk down low under the covers to hide against the small of Wade’s back and to hug his hips from behind.

Nelson’s tone suggested very much that he was indeed in trouble.

Heaps of trouble.

Mountains of trouble.

Wade promised Nelson that he would bring the Red Beast to the requested address at 11 o’clock sharp. Then he flopped over and waited for Red to inch his way up to face him.

“What’s the game-plan here, friend?” Wade asked him.

Red leaned forward for a kiss. Then another. Then started heading downward to execute a Distraction.

Wade was normally beyond down for a Distraction. But sometimes, he thought mournfully, he had to be a grown-up.

He dragged Red back up and hugged him tight so that he couldn’t escape.

Red put up a fight until the inevitable crashed over him.

Red wasn’t just a lawyer.

He was a _fucking_ lawyer.

He was the guy you called when two strikes were called and you were sitting at the bottom of the ninth, with one point between you and abysmal, irrevocable failure.

He was a damn fine lawyer.

You know, once you got past the whole I-am-the-night thing.

Red didn’t want to get past it. He clung to Wade like a lifetime while his buddy tore him a new one.

Guy was pissed. Wade would be pissed too, he figured, if his best friend fucked off to become red Batman for three months and was presumed dead by the local police.

“Matt, just—I’m trying to understand here,” Nelson pleaded. “Just _say something_ already.”

Wade had watched Red fight five guys at once. He’d seen this weird kid pick himself up out of glass and building debris. He’d watched him hide no less than thirteen of Wade’s bullets in various parts of his drywall, but not since the time Wade had first aimed a gun his way, had he seen him anything resembling scared.

He was scared now.

He had a nervous tick that Wade had never seen before. He rubbed his thumb against his knuckles.

“I’m sorry?” Red tried.

“I’m sorry? I’m sorry? That’s all you’ve got to say? Matt, it’s been months. Karen’s been fuckin’ distraught. We thought you’d killed yourself for weeks there.”

Yikes.

Awkward.

Red’s fidget intensified. He said nothing.

“Bud,” Nelson said. “You didn’t try, did you?”

Red said nothing.

“Matt. You said you didn’t feel like that, man. Why’d you lie to me?”

Why the fuck wouldn’t he lie was the better question. Red jerked up his way when he snapped this out in his defense.

“No, Wade. Don’t,” he mumbled, pushing at him.

Nelson went hard and empty as ice.

“Deadpool,” he said.

“He’s been kind to me,” Red defended.

“Deadpool,” Nelson repeated.

“I like him,” Red said.

“Of course you do,” Nelson said scathingly. But he followed that up with a sigh. “Matt, just. You know what? I’m just—I’m just happy you’re home, okay? I’m just happy that you’re okay. Are you—are we okay?”

Red hesitated.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

Nelson’s face fell.

“You don’t know?” he asked.

Red chewed a lip.

“I’m trying to find home again,” he explained, gesturing helplessly.

Nelson, in an act that Wade would admit that he was surprised by, perked up a little.

“Home?” he said. “You’re trying to come back home?”

Red fidgeted real hard and tipped his face down again.

“That’s okay,” Nelson said, suddenly three times as understanding. “You can take your time coming back home. Karen and I aren’t going anywhere. She’s okay, by the way. Just took some time off from the city.”

“When Fisk is back in jail, I can come home,” Red said quietly.

Nelson absorbed this.

“Why?” he asked. “Why do we have to wait?”

Red clenched and unclenched his hands.

“It’s not safe for you. Or Karen. For anyone who’s associated with me,” Red explained. “He wants to hurt me. He’ll use you all to hurt me. But if he thinks that you think that I’m gone and you all act like I’m gone, then he’ll think he’s won. And he’ll get lazy. Sloppy. He’s already getting sloppy. I’m ten steps back, Fogs. I can do it. Ten steps forward and I can come home. I miss home.”

Nelson pursed his lips and looked up at Wade. Evidently, the only part of this that he didn’t understand was Wade.

Wade didn’t really know where he fit into this convoluted, cryptic puzzle either. Like, maybe he was the cool side chick. The manic pixie girl love interest. Maybe Red had been using him to decompress from this relentless grind towards whatever it was he was running up against.

Nelson opened his mouth to ask the next logical follow-up question, but Red beat him to it.

“Wade is home now, too,” he said.

And that was a little unexpected.

It made Wade’s heart do things again.

It made his brain ask questions. Embarrassing questions. Like, ‘for how long?’ and ‘Are you just saying that?’ and ‘Was it the snow-Cheerios that did it? Or was it the mind-blowing sex?’

He swallowed them down. These feelings were not helpful. He should be flattered to be called home by anyone, recently-drugged or otherwise, for any period of time.

Nelson’s face was harder to read than Red’s. He cut his eyes at Wade. Wade shrugged at him.

“Did you feed him after midnight?” Nelson deadpanned.

“Just once,” Wade said.

Nelson groaned.

“Why can’t you pick someone nice? Someone decent? Someone _normal_? Every time. Every single time. It’s gonna be someone _extraordinary_ ,” he grumbled, abandoning Red and Wade to go rifle through his apartment’s kitchen for, presumably, something alcoholic to ease his descent into best-friend-hood again.

Red smiled after him, then up at Wade.

“That means he likes you,” he said.

“I don’t,” Nelson snapped.

“He approves,” Red whispered.

“Matt, so help me fucking god. If you think I won’t murder you in cold blood after three months of your bullshit, you are dead mistaken, pun intended. What the fuck’s up with your hair? When’s the last time you ate? What happened to your hand? You need a bath; you smell like the Hudson—did you touch the Hudson? What’d I tell you about touching the Hudson?”

Red burrowed himself into Wade’s side smugly.

“He likes you,” he said.

Well, if he said so.

In light of recent events, Wade attempted to be less weird and old-cat-lady-like.

Red didn’t get it and so it quickly became apparently that there was no fucking point in doing it, which was kind of comforting.

Red still didn’t go home to Nelson. Even after all the trouble of getting them in the same room again after three entire months. Instead, he continued to oscillate between smelling like ass and rainwater.

He wouldn’t eat a damn thing Wade offered him.

He’d sniff at it. Kind of give it a poke or two, then scuffle away from it and Wade until several nights later, so that they could perform this ritual again.

It was strange.

Wade couldn’t tell if they were in a relationship or not. Words had been said along those lines, but words meant fuck all.

Red said with his body that he liked Wade. That he wanted Wade. But he also laughed at Wade’s attempts to seduce him and to bring him back inside.

He eventually told Wade that he was happy that Wilson Fisk would never kill him.

This was unbelievably comforting to Red.

So naturally, Wade set plans into motion to maintain this status quo for the long term.

He found the Spiderkid with a torn mask and the shape of a fist imprinted on his ribs and decided to up the speed on those plans by a good 62%.

Spidey begged him not the kill the guy.

Red snarled at him at even the merest suggestion. As far as he was concerned, Wilson Fisk was his to deal with.

Wade didn’t get it.

He had a gun. He had bullets. He didn’t know this fucker from Adam and said fucker had laid hands on two of his people.

He’d murdered scores people for far less.

Red had thoughts about this.

He proved himself a lawyer by listing them out in their entirety while riding Wade’s dick.

Then he proved himself an asshole by removing himself from Wade’s dick, just as exciting things were about to happen so as to extract a promise from Wade in a moment of weakness that he would not kill Wilson Fisk.

Red was kind of hot when he was passionate about something besides sleeping in a rapidly disintegrating church attic.

He was also fucking annoying. With an emphasis on the ‘fucking.’

Wade had promised he would not kill Wilson Fisk. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t fuck with the guy’s head.

And since he and Red were something of a Thing now, he was allowed to follow him a little bit to make sure he wasn’t getting too much tar beaten out of him.

He accompanied Red to watch him go swing at as many Fisk henchmen as he liked one night and took the opportunity to break away and go peek into the Fisk’s personal living room. It was up pretty damn high. Some kind of penthouse.

As if that mattered to Wade.

He made a show of peeking. Did a whole routine and everything. A striptease on Christmas Eve—who wouldn’t want that?

He made some friends. Got shot at a little. And put a note in his calendar to come back for an encore the next day.

Red pretended like he didn’t think that was funny, but Wade caught him giggling to himself and then trying to keep a straight face with each kiss offered Wade’s way at the ass-crack of dawn.

Wade decided that this was positive reinforcement.

It was a new thing for him. He _never_ got positive reinforcement. It was exciting.

Still intoxicating. Even more now because he knew three of Red’s tells. Dragging them out from behind his walls was exhilarating. Being able to insight a reaction that wasn’t a scowl or a slap or a scream from someone hadn’t been part of Wade’s routine for years.

He liked it.

He wanted to keep it for as long as possible.

He was willing to do some fucking damage to keep it, he decided.

That was probably one of the things tripping off the alarm bells in his head again, but hey, fuck it. He was allowed nice things occasionally. Even if they would inevitably end horribly.

He’d allow himself this for as long as it lasted. Every bullet was worth it in the meantime.


End file.
